“Everyone has their motives. Maybe he had something she wanted,” Xuan Ye said absently, his gaze distant.
Ban Xia tilted her head and looked at the unconscious Amber, lying slumped on the ground.
With her delicate, pointed face, soft hair, and slender frame, Amber hardly looked like a cunning, scheming demon.
“Appearances can be deceiving,” Ban Xia sighed, only to be interrupted by the sound of Chi Xue’s hurried footsteps.
“Ya Jin, come see this!” Chi Xue called out, his face pale with fear as he ran into the hall.
Ban Xia and Xuan Ye followed him to the temple’s rear courtyard.
It was a tiny space, likely once used by monks, with a simple earthen bed inside the small room.
The bed, less than ten feet long, was covered with the severed heads of at least twenty foxes in various colors.
The fox pelts and tails were strewn all over the room, adding to the gruesome scene.
The small, cramped space held dozens of skinned, decapitated fox corpses, while the walls were smeared with bloodied characters—at least ten instances of the word hate written in bold, horrifying strokes.
“It seems he has a grudge against foxes—a grudge spanning eight lifetimes,” Ban Xia said after surveying the scene for a moment. The stench of blood in the air made her stomach churn, and she couldn’t help but gag.
The next day, after working late into the night, even Xuan Ye overslept. When he went to knock on Amber’s door, he discovered she had already left without saying a word.
The pot of cosmos flowers that had been sitting in the inn seemed to have withered overnight, their delicate petals scattered all over the floor.
“She knows what she’s doing,” Ban Xia remarked curtly after hearing the news.
“When a malevolent ghost is involved, it always ties back to Ya Jin. This is the responsibility of our demigod clan,” Chi Xue added, lifting his chin.
Ban Xia glanced at him, barely resisting the urge to ask how much “responsibility” cost per pound. Instead, she muttered, “That depends on whether your Ya Jin even cares to intervene. That ghost seems like a pitiful soul—his wife was killed, after all.”
“He is a malevolent spirit,” Xuan Ye replied firmly. “All malevolent spirits, in their early stages, instinctively feed on resentment. Every one of them has caused harm.”
“And Amber is unhappy—very, very unhappy,” Xuan Ye continued, staring at the wilted flowers. “Maybe she hasn’t realized it yet, but her emotions not only allow her to communicate with everything, they also profoundly affect her surroundings.”
Xuan Ye had already planned their route before setting out. Their destination was a well-known fur merchant in the capital.
It felt like a shot in the dark. After all, there was no guarantee the male ghost was local—he could have tracked Amber from far away.
None of them held high hopes, but surprisingly, they found a lead at only the second fur shop they visited.
“You’re talking about Mo Xie, aren’t you?” The bald shopkeeper was certain. “It’s been ages since he last came by, but how could I forget him? The goods he sold me were top-notch—some pieces even ended up in the palace.”
“Where was he from? And how long has it been since he came here?”
“It’s been a long time, at least seven or eight years—no, nearly ten. About nine years ago, he sold me a silver-tipped black fox pelt that was rumored to have gone to the Empress Dowager. That was our last deal,” the shopkeeper said, squinting. “As for where he’s from, I wouldn’t know. But he spoke perfect Mandarin—impressive for a hunter from the mountains. A mountain man speaking Mandarin? That’s rare!”
At least they now had a name, Mo Xie, and some progress.
Xuan Ye thanked the shopkeeper profusely and even bought Ban Xia a fur coat on the way out. He asked the shopkeeper to contact them if he remembered anything else, promising a generous reward.
“Besides speaking Mandarin, how was his way with words?” Xuan Ye paused at the door to ask. “Would you call him eloquent?”
“Eloquent? More than that!” The shopkeeper exaggerated with a dramatic gesture. “That man’s tongue was more flowery than a lotus! He didn’t just speak human languages—he spoke bird language too! I used to keep a thrush here, and every time he came by, he’d mimic its calls. Not only did he sound like the bird, but he also mimicked its rhythm and tone so perfectly it was as if he were talking to it. My thrush got so excited it would thrash about in its cage!”
Once outside the shop, Xuan Ye fell silent, looking visibly preoccupied.
“Is it difficult for a spirit to learn to speak if they’re trying to cultivate into human form?” he asked Chi Xue after a while.
“Very difficult,” Chi Xue replied, unusually sharp this time, not even bothering to consult his worn-out book. “It’s easier than forming a human body, but for those with dull aptitude, it could take a century at least.”
“What if they consumed a human tongue with extraordinary spiritual energy—what we’d call a particularly gifted tongue?”
Chi Xue’s sharpness immediately vanished as he flipped open his book and began frantically searching through its pages.
After flipping for a while without finding anything, his famously slow comprehension finally caught up. He looked up, startled. “Ya Jin, are you saying Amber…? That she…”
“No matter what, Amber can’t speak,” Xuan Ye interrupted, cutting off further speculation.
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